


fog on the windows

by marcaskane (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/marcaskane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David often considers the fact that Gillian wouldn’t have spared so much as a second glance his way if they had not been brought together on The X-Files.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fog on the windows

                David often considers the fact that Gillian wouldn’t have spared so much as a second glance his way if they had not been brought together on _The X-Files_.

                She’s never told him as much, but he knows with absolute certainty that Gillian is too sensible to be pulled in by a handsome face and charming smile, and if they had not met as Scully and Mulder, he would have only ever been a handsome face and charming smile.

                Maybe that’s still all he is, but somehow she sees past the surface to a man who may or may not be there. A man who she refuses to call good, but she sees a level of complexity in him that he doesn’t even quite understand. It’s enough to make her smile when she sees him and press playful kisses to his neck as he’s trying to run lines in the solitude of her hotel room at night.

                But then there are the days that every word that she speaks is tinged with venom and her eyes shoot daggers and it’s on days like that when David irrationally wonders whether she only keeps up her smoking habit because it’s an excuse to get away from him for a few minutes at a time.

                He can’t help but worry that Gillian is seeing the true him on days like that. It feels like she hates him twice as much as she could ever possibly love him and David probably deserves it.

                Even so, she comes back eventually, or he chases after her and apologizes for mistakes he’s not even sure he made because if he can’t have her mouth on him again soon he thinks he’s going to shatter into a million pieces.

                Meanwhile a growing collection of cast and crew feign ignorance as the air between David and Gillian positively crackles with an energy that they excuse themselves to release the moment they have an opportunity to go back to either of their trailers. No one’s ever walked in on them kissing – or doing anything else even more untoward – but there’s no question whether it’s happening.

                And Gillian, she eventually isn’t even embarrassed. She should be. David remembers the bright-eyed young woman who first walked into the room to read the part with him at auditions, and that Gillian would have cared.

                “As long as it doesn’t leave the set,” she tells him once, and he’s not sure whether she’s talking about the rumors or talking about them.

                On the nights they’re not together, when he drinks himself to sleep, he often stumbles across one particular thought—that it’s his fault she’s so jaded. It’s not, of course. But once the thought is there, it fills him to his core and he drowns in it until he drifts off.

                David loses track of the number of “last times” they have. Somewhere along the line, they stop trying to claim that there will _be_ a last time. Even after 20-hour shoots, when they can’t stand the sight of each other and insist on taking separate cars to the same hotel, David knows all too well that he will find himself in bed with her again.

                Their relationship lasts in perpetuity and it is almost twenty years after they first met (almost to the day, not that David’s counting) when they’re falling asleep together in his bed and he’s only just cognizant enough to hear her mumble, “I’m scared I’m in love with you.”

                “Me too,” he murmurs back.

                She doesn’t ask him to clarify what he’s scared of – that he’s fallen in love with her or that she’s fallen in love with him – but maybe it’s because she already knows that he’s not quite sure himself.

                If he’s sure of anything, it’s that things would have been easier if she had only seen him as a pretty face.


End file.
